


May I Have This Dance

by orphan_account



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 18:44:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7450048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arin doesn't know how to slow dance? Man. Guess someone will have to teach him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	May I Have This Dance

It was very embarrassing to ask, but he had to. 28 years and Arin still didn't know how to dance?

"You can't dance? I can't either. Well, I mean I can slow dance, but I can't really do anything else. You know I can only do that one dance I always do. Like with my arms." Dan casually continued making his morning tea as Arin stood there with reddening cheeks.

"Well, about that..." Arin said, tucking hair behind his ear. That's actually the dance he wanted to learn how to do. Slow dances. It wasn't really for a particular reason, he just wanted to learn. Arin never knew when an occasion could come up. And he just really wanted something like that under his belt. You move your body like a fool at a party and people say you can dance. But when you can't do something as simple as slow dance, people look at you funny. They look at you with a 'really?' kind of look.

Arin hated those looks.

"Wait, you want to learn how to slow dance? Like, waltz?" Dan asked, setting his fresh tea on the kitchen counter. Arin shuffled his feet.

"If that's what it's called," he said.

There was a pause between the two of them as Dan seemed to be considering something. Then he broke into a grin, and started to the living room, motioning for Arin to follow.

Dan and Arin stood in the middle of the almost empty living room. Save for a couch, a small coffee table, and a TV on an entertainment center, it was bare. Dan quickly moved the coffee table out of the way. 

"Okay," Dan said, moving towards Arin. They stood less than a foot apart. "I can't really WALTZ waltz, but I can show you how to slow dance a little bit. Here," Dan outstretched a hand to Arin. "Take my hand."

Arin stared at Dan's open palm for a second before hesitantly taking it. Their fingers interlocked. 

"So we hold these hands like this," Dan said, suspending their locked hands level with their heads, a few inches away from their ears. "Then you put your hand here, like, if you were the girl." Dan took Arin's free hand and placed it on his own shoulder. "And then I put mine here." Dan then put his hand right in the curve of Arin's hip. They stood there for a second in that position.

"Are you sure it's like this?" Arin asked, suddenly becoming aware of every sharp angle complimented by every misshapen curve on his body. He felt cumbersome, like he had been dipped in syrup and had to wade through it.

Dan, sensing Arin's anxiety, gave a reassuring nod. "Yep, you're just perfect."

"Don't make me blush Dan," Arin mumbled, knowing that the comment was on his dance position. But for some reason, he felt like it went deeper than that.

"Okay," Dan said, looking at his feet. "Then we can just like, move our feet. Like...this." He started to move his left foot forward, and Arin hastily tried to move his left foot back, but he moved it back too far and lost his balance for a second. This caused Dan to lunge forward to try and catch his own balance too. When they were up straight again, Dan laughed.

"Alright, well maybe that won't work." Dan scratched his stubble lazily as he wracked his brain for a plan. His eyes lit up.

"Hey, okay, so, maybe instead of just trying to follow me, you can just, put your feet on my feet and I'll guide you." 

"Dan, won't I crush your feet or something?" Arin asked.

"No!" Dan giggled. "Not like, full feet on feet. Just, your toes on my toes. I have grossly huge feet Arin, I can handle it."

Arin was hesitant, but agreed. "Okay." 

So Arin put the tips of his toes on top the tips of Dan's toes, just enough so Dan could guide him in the movements.

"Okay," Dan said. "And then we just do this." Still looking down at his feet, Arin saw Dan start to move his left foot forward again. But instead of trying to reciprocate the movement, he just let Dan move his feet for him. And then after Dan moved his left foot, he moved his right foot forward. Then he moved them back, left foot first, right foot next. And so on. 

Arin became mesmerized by the way Dan moved his feet. He seemed so in his element, so graceful, even with him trying to move around an extra body. 

Arin was so intent on Dan's footwork, that he only looked up when he noticed that Dan had started a gentle sway, back and forth. 

"Did you hear me dude?" Dan asked. Arin jerked his head up and locked eyes with Dan. His brown, shiny, puppified eyes. A half a smirk was on his face.

"No, wait, what?" Arin wasn't even aware Dan had said anything. Dan just rolled his eyes, and indicated with the hand that was on Arin's hip. He indicated the swaying.

"You just kinda move back and forth like this." And then they swayed for a few seconds. The silence was suspended in the air, filling the room with an awkward tension.

Dan suddenly stopped swaying, probably feeling the same thing Arin did. "Hold on," He said, detaching himself from Arin. He walked over to the light switch and turned it off, letting the sunlight from outside be the only thing lighting the room. Then he took his phone out of his pocket and fiddled around for a minute. After said minute, he clicked the screen on his phone and music began. 

It was slow music, with no lyrics or clear purpose. It was just background music, simple and smooth. The kind that you could listen to before you went to bed, and it would be such a pleasant falling-asleep that you would have good dreams.

"Okay," Dan said, balancing his phone on the arm of the couch so the music would spread throughout the room. He walked back to Arin and they went back into that hand-holding dance position. "Now it's like we're actually dancing." He started to sway again.

"What, we weren't dancing before?" Arin asked sarcastically.

"You know what I mean." Dan tried to sound annoyed, but he couldn't hide his smile.

After about twenty or thirty seconds of dancing in the living room, Danny seemed to remember something. "Oh, and there's like, a trick I learned that you can use. Like if you're dancing with a girl and you really like her, but you don't really know her so you don't wanna kiss her yet."

"Yeah?"

"So," Dan untangled himself from Arin and fixed his shirt before continuing. "You can do this." He took Arin by the wrists (who apparently seemed to play the role of the girl now) and put his hands on either of his shoulders. Then he took his hands and put both of them on Arin's hips. It didn't seem so different, except they weren't holding hands.

"Then after a minute of dancing like this, you can move closer, like this." Dan looked like he was just dancing regularly, but in under three seconds, he had somehow moved so close to Arin that there wasn't even an inch between them. "And then you can kinda like, slowly hug her." And that's what Dan did. He slid his arms around Arin's waist. In turn, Arin wrapped his around Dan's neck. The movements took less than five seconds, and yet they happened in slow motion. It was one perfect movement, fluid and easy. And suddenly Dan and Arin were hugging as they swayed back and forth.

"What next?" Arin asked in a whisper-like voice. He knew he could talk as loud as he wanted, but something about the atmosphere in the room made him want to keep quiet. So he wouldn't disturb it.

"You can do this," Dan said, laying his head on Arin's shoulder. "So like, you guys are close, but it isn't even sexual. So you don't, like, weird her out, you know."

"Yeah." Arin, after a moment, put his head on Dan's shoulder too. Thank the lucky stars that they were relatively the same height. It seemed so perfect, the way his head fit right into the curve of Dan's neck. The way Dan's hands felt so comfortable around his waist. The way Arin held his hands around Dan's neck, like he didn't want to let go.

This didn't feel as awkward as it did before. Arin felt like he was doing something right, even if he really wasn't doing much of anything. But he felt good, warm. A smile crept across his face as they danced around the room. They seemed to float around the room, seamless. Arin wasn't really aware of the movement, he had closed his eyes. But he felt content and fuzzy and happy and comforted all at once. 

"You're a good dancer, Dan," Arin mumbled. His fingers wandered up into Dan's hair, creeping up the back of his neck. He fiddled with the brown curls, grateful for their softness. His own head of hair was always so static-y or greasy or down right wiry. It was nice to feel hair that just felt...well...nice.

"You too Ar," Dan replied. Arin could hear the smile in his voice. And he wondered, for a second, when he finally knew the difference between a smiling voice and just a voice. How long did he know Dan before he could make that distinction? A small notion, surely, but to Arin, it meant so much.

Dan's hands fidgeted too. They moved up into the space between Arin's shoulder blades, and his thumbs made little circles there. Almost like a tiny massage. It felt good. It felt right.

"Thanks for teaching me how to dance," Arin threw in there. He felt...sleepy. He could hear it in his voice and he could feel it in his head. His mind had slowed down until he wasn't thinking much of anything, and his body took on autopilot with the swaying. He could fall asleep right here, slow dancing with Dan in his arms.

"Glad to be a teacher," Dan replied, and his voice sounded tired too. But it was that wondrous type of tired. He wasn't mentally or physically exhausted. He wasn't ready to pass out as soon as his head hit a pillow. He was just tired. Contentedly tired.

This was probably the most relaxed Arin had been all month.

Who knew dancing could be so easy?


End file.
